Youth gets heart of 45 year old patient at AIIMS

"The man had sustained brain injury after suffering a fall. We were intimated by NOTTO (National Organ & Tissue Transplant Organisation) and a team of doctors went to Chandigarh by a flight last night. They harvested the heart from the brain dead patient this morning around 5 AM and came back to Delhi.

"It was then transplanted into a 20-year-old young man, who suffers from dilated cardiomyopathy," said Dr Balram Airan, Dean, AIIMS and chief of the Cardio-Thorasic Centre.

The man was declared dead at PGI, Chandigarh and the family agreed to donate his heart, he added.

"From T3 terminal at IGI Airport, we provided a green corridor of 17.5 km. The journey to AIIMS from the airport began at 8:50 AM and ended at 09:17 AM," a senior official of the Delhi Traffic Police Department said.

Later in the day, another green corridor was provided from the city airport to a private hospital in south Delhi's Okhla for an organ transplant there.

"The organ was brought to Delhi from Chandigarh in a special aircraft. From terminal 1D to Escorts Hospital, a corridor of 18 km was provided. The organ was ferried in 18 minutes. The journey began at 1:05 PM and ended at 01:23 PM," the official said.

The laying of two green corridors comes two days after a controversy erupted over an ambulance carrying a bleeding child allegedly being stopped near Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium in central Delhi due to a VIP movement.